Page:The traitor; a story of the fall of the invisible empire (IA traitorstoryoffa00dixo).pdf/30

 touches were tributes to the Huguenot ancestry of his grandmother.

The building crowned the summit of a hill and was surrounded by twenty-five acres of trees of native growth beneath which wound labyrinths of walks hedged by boxwood. Its shape was a huge, red brick rectangle, three and a half stories in height, with mansard roof broken by quaint projecting French windows. On three sides porches had been added, their roof supported by small white Colonial columns. The front door, of pure Colonial pattern, opened directly into a great hall of baronial dimensions, at the back of which a circular stairway wound along the curved wall.

The attic story was lighted by the windows of an observatory. From the hall one could thus look up through the galleries of three floors and the slightest whisper from above was echoed with startling distinctness. The strange noises which the Negro servants had heard floating down from these upper spaces had been translated into ghost stories which had grown in volume and picturesque distinction with each succeeding generation. The house had always been "haunted."

The family vault in the remotest corner of the lawn was built of solid masonry sunk deep into the hillside. Its iron doors, which were never